


Chili Bean

by flippyspoon



Series: Pour Some Sugar on Me [46]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon
Summary: Billy isn't always sure of himself as a father.





	Chili Bean

He’d yelled too loud.

He’d grabbed her wrist too hard.

He was sure of it.

Jessie was playing in her room. Billy had just peeked in and she seemed just fine, sprawled on the carpet, giving silly voices to her Barbies. Billy went to the back porch and sat down, hands trembling, and called Steve at work.

“Hey, what’s-”

“I fucked up, I fucked up.”

“Whoa. Hey, what’s the matter?”

“I… Jess, just now she was… I was making pasta. There was this… There was a pot of boiling water. And she’s so tall. She’s five and she’s so fucking tall. She grabbed for it and she- And I yelled, I yelled too loud and I grabbed her wrist. It was so close, she would’ve been fucking burned but… Steve, I grabbed her wrist so hard-”

“Whoa, okay, okay.” Steve was moving around, Billy could tell, likely trying to find a more private place to talk than the dining room of the swanky restaurant he managed. “Just take a deep breath for me, babe.”

“But-”

“Take a deep breath.”

Billy took a drag on his cigarette rather than a deep breath. He hadn’t smoked in two years.

Not officially anyway.

“Billy,” Steve said slowly. “It sounds like you stopped our five-year-old from seriously burning herself and now you’re beating yourself up about it.”

“I just…” Billy wiped tears away. “She looked scared and-”

“Were you really angry?”

“No! I was just freaking out because I don’t want to see our kid in the fucking burn unit!”

“Okay. Well, there you go. You’re making way too much of this.”

“But she looked _scared_.”

“I know, but she should be scared of boiling water! She also needs to be scared of walking into traffic. That doesn’t mean she’s scared of _you_.”

“I just…” Billy took a real deep breath this time. “I worry about it more the older she gets.”

“You are such a good dad, babe,” Steve said quietly into the phone. “You need to believe me. Because I’ve been paying attention. Okay? I’d tell you if you were out of line. You gotta trust me.”

“Yeah.”

“You are not him.”

“Okay. Yeah. Okay.”

“Jessie in her room?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you to go in there and talk to her,” Steve said. “You tell me later if she seems scared alright?”

“Yeah alright.”

“I gotta get back to work but-”

“I know, yeah.”

“I _love_ you.”

“Love you too.”

In Jessie’s room, Billy leaned in the doorway and waited for her to look up to see her reaction. She grinned at him as if nothing had even happened in the kitchen and his heart danced in his chest.

“Hey, chili bean,” he said softly.

“Pop-pop!” Jessie said. “Play Barbies?”

“Okay,” Billy said, and plopped down on the carpet next to her, but he couldn’t stop the lump in his throat forming and wiped his eyes. Having a kid had not made him any less of an emotional dude. The kid seemed to bring everything to the surface.

“ _Pop-pop_!” Jessie crawled into his lap. “Why are you sad?”

“I’m okay, baby,” Billy muttered. “I just um… I’m sorry I yelled like that in the kitchen.”

“Don’t touch hot,” Jessie said, sheepish. Jessica Harrington-Hargrove shared none of their DNA but she had big brown eyes just like Steve’s. Billy had known he was a goner for his daughter from minute one. The truth was, Steve was usually the disciplinarian as little Jessie had Billy wrapped around her tiny pinky.

“Yeah,” Billy said, playing with her dark brown ponytail. “Hot is bad. I just um… I don’t want to be…scary. I don’t want to scare you. I hope I wasn’t scary.”

“You’re not scary!” Jessie said, looking confused. “The curtain monster is scary! You make the curtain monster go away.”

The curtain monster was a trick of the shadows in Jessie’s curtains which she insisted was a goblin when she was trying to go to sleep. Both Steve and Billy and battled the curtain monster multiple times though Billy had once said that the curtain monster was trapped behind “the gate” which was now closed (Steve had not thought it very amusing).

“I’m not scary?” Billy said, blinking back tears. “Not ever?”

“Nooo.” Jessie hugged him, or tried to, her little arms attempting to encompass his broad shoulders and he wrapped his arms around her and breathed. “You’re Pop-pop!”

“Oh man, I love you so much, chili bean.”

“Love you too, Pop-pop.”

“Hey,” Billy said. He closed his eyes and sniffed a little, smiling now. “When Daddy gets home, how about we make him do the monkey dance?”

“Monkey dance!” Jessie said, squirming in his arms. “Monkey dance! Monkey dance!”

“Okay.” He kissed the strap of her little overalls. “Spaghetti and monkey dance it is.”


End file.
